The daughter was laid off from her last job, and has been unable to find a similar job in the legal industry. The middle son is working, but doesn't make enough to pay rent, so Mr. Doctor pays for that. I guess to an extent he's enabling them, but on the other hand, he's not the only person in his generation going through this. Jeff and I might actually be moving in with Jeff's parents for a bit to save up some money. Is it wrong for them to let us move in instead of making Jeff and I figure it out on our own? Who knows.
Mr. Doctor made a comment which I found interesting, and I'll paraphrase: "I thought having kids was going to be like my generation was: you go to school, get a job, and start supporting yourself. I thought I was going to be done after college, maybe graduate school, but I'm still having to support all three of them." This is something that's come up quite a bit lately, and I find it pretty intriguing. What is crazy about this whole situation is that Jeff's parents and Mr. Doctor are among plenty of parents going through the same thing, I'm sure.
I think I wrote before how my family seems to be disappointed in the fact that my cousins and I haven't reached any sort of stability in our lives. They think back to when they were our age, and although they all had their difficulties in getting where they are, they had kids, a steady and secure job with potential to move up, and eventually a house.
The New York times published an article, a lengthy one that I'll confess I wasn't able to read in it's entirety, talking about why 20-somethings are taking so long to grow up. They've termed it "emerging adulthood." Our "transition to adulthood" is traditionally marked by five milestones:
- Completing school
- Leaving home
- Becoming financially independent
- Marrying
- Having a child
Our generation is reaching these milestones at a later point in life than past generations. According to the article, some of the reasons for our delay in reaching these milestones include:
- "Need for more education to survive in an information-based economy;
- Fewer entry-level jobs even after all that schooling;
- Young people feeling less rush to marry because of general acceptance of premarital sex, cohabitation and birth control;
- and young women feeling less rush to have babies given their wide range of career options and their access to assisted reproductive technology if they delay pregnancy beyond their most fertile years."
I find that all very interesting, and I have few points of my own that I've been wanting to make about all of this:
We're not fuck ups. Sorry for the f-bomb, but I'm not sure what other expression to use, haha. I get the feeling that older generations (or maybe just the media, hmm....) think we're doing something hugely wrong with our lives, that we haven't played our cards right. But, we've kinda played the cards we were dealt. We were raised on the understanding that if you go to school and put your time in, things will work out for you. Given how many people get college degrees these days, that simple plan of just "going to school and working hard" can't work out for everyone.
As spoken by Tyler Durden in Fight Club:
"Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war...our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."
Which leads me to...
The education bubble has to burst. Remember that whole housing bubble and how it finally exploded? I think something similar has to happen with higher level education. Hear me out. So. Housing. Prices got crazy high. People were able to buy them based on loans they couldn't afford to pay back. People didn't pay. Housing market crashed. People got stuck with over priced homes, and many of them lost them. But the pricing of real estate finally came down to something that was at least remotely affordable for the average American.
There are so many people going to college now, it's basically like another high school degree. Tuition for colleges and universities has been on a steady incline for how long? I'm not gonna look this up, but I'm pretty sure that every semester I hear something on the news about tuition going up 10, 20, 30%. NPR had a brief segment in which, if I remember correctly, it stated that the UC system was the most expensive public education in the world. How is that a public education? Not to mention private schools, such as my law school. Which is overpriced, and I couldn't afford, but someone gave me a loan, which I'm not quite able to pay back. I haven't made a decent payment on my loan since I graduated, but the interest is still accumulating. And I know I'm not the only one that didn't think this through. So what's going to happen when thousands of graduates start defaulting? I think something has to give for the cost of education to normalize. The big difference between a house and an education: they can't take back my degrees! Suckas.
That's more of a rant, but the point for this particular conversation is that almost everyone goes to college now. A college degree does not set you apart from the next person applying for the job you want. Maybe a master's degree. Maybe a Ph.D. Maybe the fact that your uncle John knowns the hiring partner. Education alone does not set you apart anymore. "I'm a dime a dozen, and so are you!" Yep, I just quoted that book you should've read in high school: Death of a Salesman. Maybe the cost of education will continue to increase to such staggering rates that not everyone will be able to go to college or a university, and the rest will follow through, you know, yadda yadda yadda supply and demand, less over-qualified applicants per available job positions. (Which begs the question, is it fair that only the wealthiest will be able to afford an education for better jobs?)
Job stability isn't what it used to be. I see my mom who's been at her job for over 10 years, and Jeff's dad, who just celebrated his 10 year anniversary with his company, and I wonder if/when I'll find a job that I see myself staying with for that long. Careers these days seem full of moves, transitions, lateral hires, moving up to the next thing. I'm not sure if that's because we can't be happy staying at a job that long, or because the possibility just isn't available as much anymore. Given the competition for a job position these days, it seems we're all a little more expendable. A company could probably find someone younger willing to work for free to get experience, for the same job that I want to get paid for, ha!
Priorities have changed. Getting back to the reasons for our delay given above, I'd have to agree with most of them. Instead of one head of household, you usually have two now. That's two people that have probably gone to school and are trying to figure out their career before settling down. Which also means school loans that need to get paid, and maybe that factors in to the delay in having kids and buying a house. I think this generation has also changed the order of priorities quite a bit. Maybe it's selfishness, I dunno, but it seems that our generation has put a lot of value in living their life before settling down, whether that's through travel or other life experiences. I don't think we feel the same pressure to settle down and have kids that our parents or grandparents had. Whether that's for better or worse, you can each decide :)
So. Have we failed to launch? Or are we just living life at a different pace than those before us? Or is this part of some Darwinian evolution?
Hmmmmm...
P.S. Pretty timely to come across this online today.
P.P.S. Another timely article I saw today regarding the business of law schools.
I thoroughly enjoyed this post. Very funny and very well written. If I didn't move to Nebraska, I would be living with my mother. No question about that. I see less failure to launch babies here in the midwest because standard of living is so cheap and unemployment is so low. Seth also says that it's a stigma to live with your parents here too, whereas in so cal, it's a necessity. Just food for thought.
ReplyDeleteAw, thanks Shirls! Definitely took me the longest, although I'm sure I could have put in another hour if I had the time...
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think California presents all sorts of anomalies, for better or worse :)
i think you're absolutely right about all of the things that have caused this generation "fail to launch."
ReplyDelete(the fact that the supposed milestones (whose? corporate america? it's not like we're living in the industrial revolution and need to make babies to keep the factories going? or, do we? :) ) of launch basically do not apply outside of straight marriages irks me, but that's a different post altogether.)
student loan debt, imo, is a driving factor toward making a lot of people of your or my (Y or X) generation postpone almost everything: marrying and combining incomes might help, but there's no way i can afford to pay off my student loan debt, buy a house, and support kids! in fact, my last decision about putting off/not going back to school to get a job doing what i think i want to be doing in the next ten years is that it's either go back to school OR buy a house. in my lifetime. like, i would be paying off student loan debt well into my late 50s. wtf? so, i feel your pain and appreciate you putting your thoughts on this into words!
Great post! Completely resonated with me. I say move in with Jeff's parents and save anpil dinero. You already know that living with my mom contributed greatly to my financial freedom. And you're right, an undergraduate degree is becoming more and more like a high school diploma. It's definitely more advantageous to know people in the right places.
ReplyDeleteOk - first of all, tell Mr. Dr. that he's the one that chose to raise his kids in a system/culture that's got major problems in the "life fulfillment" region, not to mention a system that's basically an arms race for prestige. If he wasn't ready to face the consequences of that then he a) shouldn't have had children or b) should have raised them in a culture that doesn't have the same self-destruct blueprints that ours seems to.
ReplyDeleteWhew. That being said. We are lucky enough to live in a time & place where we have the stability and support to seek fulfillment rather than stability and support. I think the reason a lot of people in our generation are "failing to launch" is that we look at the trajectory of the hard-working generation ahead of us and say, "uh, what are my other options?" In fact, it seems to me like maybe the climax of humanity's (modern) struggle would be a generation where everyone felt supported enough to consider their path to fulfillment. What more could a father/mother/doctor want for their children than that? (Besides for the kids to leave them alone).
College... yikes... kinda wish I'd just taken the howevermany thousands of dollars and started a business with it. I know all the studies say that people with degrees are more likely to be better off, but I wonder how controlled are the initial conditions of those studies.
Anyway. Fuck the "failure to launch" accusers. We're all doing what we can to be happy, and we don't need to measure our success by their standards.
Here's your P.P.P.S. - http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/07/unemployment-and-jobs
I could write a term paper on my thoughts pertaining to this, but since I'm not in college anymore, I won't.
ReplyDeleteIt's just the matriculation of societal norms. We're doing things different from the way our parents did things, just like they did it different than THEIR parents did things. How many of us have parents who didn't graduate college? I postulate that the number will be DRASTICALLY higher than it will be for our kids and their friends. We have more opportunity; we also have more competition. We have more competition; we also have higher standards to meet.
Furthermore, a lot of us are graduating college with (as you've mentioned) significant debt. Life-altering debt. It's simply not as feasible to put a down payment on a house when you also have tens of thousands of dollars in debt to pay off. Also, I'll argue that home ownership is going to continue to decrease over our generation and the next. Sure, owning a home CAN be a great investment. It can also be the biggest financial noose one can tie around one's neck.
As we continue to relocate in greater droves to cities (that's where most of the jobs our fancy and costly degrees qualify us for are located, after all), it'll be substantially more costly to buy a home. Combine that with the rate at which we switch jobs (I've been out of school 4 years and have had 2 different jobs - soon to be 3), and renting makes a lot more fiscal and practical sense. I can't ever see myself owning a home, and I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.
I could go on, but this beer ain't gonna drink itself.
I love you Alex! Thank you for taking the time to put all of this together. I appreciate your perspective and agree with many of the other comments. We have not failed to launch we just have a much longer runway (and life for that matter) than our parents and grandparents did.
ReplyDeleteI think trying to 'grow up' before making major life decisions (career, marriage, etc.) is a good thing. Living with family does carry with it a certain stigma in our culture today, which I think is silly, financial stability and planning are very important and if that means you have to sacrifice and move home (or have a roommate :-) ) I think its the smartest thing to do.
I have to tell myself all the time to slow down and enjoy the journey instead of always worrying about where I am 'supposed' to be at this stage in my life. Thanks for reminding me that I am not alone!
Katie
First of all, wow. Thank you everyone for the thoughtful comments. This was my first attempt at writing something with a little more depth than what I'm cooking tonight or what song I'm liking at the moment, and I'm glad many of you were interested in the topic and substance.
ReplyDeleteKatie, I like the "longer runway" line, and think it's a good summary of the other comments: we have a longer runway because we have these debts from school, or we have to excel in a specific area to meet those higher standards that Kyle mentioned. Unfortunately the length of this runway is giving us a lot of chances to stall along the way, haha.
Jeanene, I actually forgot that I wanted to write about where these "milestones" came from and whether they were reflective of our generation or not. Glad you brought that up! I think Kyle made a good point about home ownership decreasing with our generation...it may not be practical anymore...in which case, that's kind of a shitty milestone :) I just saw what a friend of mine had to go through to purchase a house, and good Lord, I doubt she'd want to go through that again if she had to move.
Mike, I'd have to disagree with the first part of your comment--for example, I would like to have kids someday, but I'm not going to move them away from our friends and family to avoid societal flaws. I also don't think I should have to chose between staying close to friends and family, and having kids. So I'm not sure that Mr. Doctor really had a viable option to do something differently; it's not his fault or my fault that our society is so flawed (OR IS IT?!).
I do agree with the fulfillment over stability opinion, however. I think what bothers me is that older generations think our choice of fulfillment over stability is somehow naive or misguided. I'm also curious to see how this scenario plays out for future generations: will there be a massive overhaul of the educational system, or will just fewer people go to college? How will that affect professional/non-professional careers?
Kyle, I need one of those beers.